Residential Real Estate; Middle-Income Complex Planned for Rockaway

By RACHELLE GARBARINE

Published: February 27, 1998

Believing that the market for rental apartments for middle-income tenants is improving on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, a developer is building the first such project in the area in over a decade.

The $13.5 million development will have 130 apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom units in five four-story brick buildings. It will take shape over the next 10 months on an empty patch of land at 2229-2259 Dix Avenue, between McBride Street and Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway.

The developer is Dix-McBride L.L.P. of Astoria, Queens, headed by George Fakiris, who has built some 70 apartment buildings with 18,000 residences, mostly rentals, throughout New York City in the last 25 years. He is financing the project with his own money and an $8.25 million construction loan from EAB, a Uniondale, N.Y., bank owned by the Dutch banking giant ABN Amro Bank, N.V.

The project is moving ahead at a time when there is renewed interest in redeveloping the former resort area, which fell into decline after World War II. About 16 percent of the land, or about 700 acres, in the area is vacant. Much of this stems from the razing of hundreds of acres of bungalows, modest homes and hotels from Beach 32d to Beach 73d Streets in 1965 as part of city urban renewal plans that never materialized.

But in the last three years, as the economy revived, planning resumed. Jonathan L. Gaska, district manager for Community Board 14, which helps guide growth in the area, said that in that time about 70 residences, mostly two-family homes, have been or are being built in the area.

More development is planned. At an old urban renewal site along Jamaica Bay between Beach 35th and Beach 51st Streets in the Edgemere section, there are plans for 800 housing units, primarily two-family homes, to be built under New York City's New Homes Program. Under it, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development will work with the nonprofit New York City Housing Partnership to choose a developer to build, with city and state subsidies, homes affordable to buyers with incomes between $32,000 and $70,000 a year.

The Edgemere project, to be developed in four phases, will also include up to 100,000 square feet of retail space, a new elementary school and 13 acres of parks. Construction of the first phase, 132 residences, is expected to begin in 2000, following site acquisition, which is to start in the fall. Construction of new streets and sewers is to begin in the summer of 1999, city officials said.

Plans were also announced in June for another urban renewal area, along the Atlantic Ocean from Beach 25th to Beach 73d in the Arverne section. A Canadian company, the Heathmount Arts and Entertainment Corporation, wants to build a 2.7 million-square-foot entertainment, sports and hotel complex, to be called the Technodome. Issues like the cost and extent of road and sewer improvements the area would need to accommodate the project are still being discussed.

Meanwhile, work continues on Dix-McBride's Dix Avenue project, begun in December. Mr. Fakiris bought the three-acre site for $1.1 million three years ago with the intention of building rentals for low-income tenants. That plan was abandoned when he was unable to get public subsidies to help finance the project.

He said he pursued the current project because of the new development planned in the area and what he sensed was ''a big demand for apartments for middle-income tenants, which no one is building.''

In addition, under the city's 421a abatement program, which provides partial tax exemptions to developers who build multiple dwellings on vacant, underused sites, property taxes will be kept to a minimum for 15 years.

Mr. Gaska said the community board had opposed the low-income rental project because it was important to the area's revival to encourage housing for middle-income families. He said the district is home to about 5,000 public housing units, and of its population of 106,000, about 30 percent receive public assistance.

''If successful, the Dix Avenue project will be a shot in the arm that could help turn that part of Far Rockaway around,'' Mr. Gaska said, adding that it, along with the plans for the urban renewal sites, ''show that people want to invest here.'' But if the Dix Avenue project is not successful, he said, ''the concern is that it will be converted into housing for low-income tenants.''

Robin J. Cohen, senior vice president for the real estate lending division at EAB, added that the bank lent the money to the developer because the projected rents would be affordable to middle-income people, who are moving into the area.

Rents for the apartments, with 443 to 882 square feet on average, are expected to range from $550 to $1,100 per month. There will also be a playground and underground and surface parking for 200 cars. The complex will be gated and have security cameras. Leasing is expected to begin late in July.

Map of Far Rockaway shows site of development: A developer is building 130 apartments in five buildings. (The New York Times)